@inlovewithmybestfriend Ha -- sure, if we can trade.
I think about associations as massive Venn diagrams -- that is, what does my target audience want, and what is my client or company authorized to talk about or produce? The overlap represents the opportunity.
For example, my current target audience is always seeking out new materials, both to keep their license through continuing education materials by authorized associations, as well as to progress their business with the latest research (we're in healthcare). They also frequently gravitate towards each other in insular, tribal groups on various social media platforms.
So, just make whatever they want most, and create my own curated group, right? Wrong, for two reasons:
- My company lacks the authority to discuss general healthcare topics like "best way to set a broken arm," for example. Our authority isn't in day to day care, but rather in patient compliance and behavioral change.
- Our audience already has resources and influencers they trust for information like that, so forcing ourselves to compete directly with the same type of content won't work. It takes a long-ass time of consistent content production and word of mouth reputation management to get our audience to trust and use a content source.
So then, I look to see where we overlap. In these two cases, there are two opportunities:
- Create content that is in our wheelhouse explicitly, while linking to the others for authority and integration.
- Pay to play advertising with trusted resources so we get their authority and access to their audience, who are willing to try things their authority recommends.
This is currently taking many forms with us -- syndication, CE course development that counts for licensing, easily shareable and timely content for within those communities, etc -- with various levels of difficulty.
But the key is to find the crossover between what your audience wants and what they'll accept from your company as authentic (and what you can afford to do).
Even if Gucci's audience owns a lot of cars, I wouldn't trust them to teach me how to change a tire.
